Europe's biggest mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse has splashed out more than £140m on a buying spree in an effort to "compete head on" with BT.
It has bought alternative fixed line telecom provider OneTel for £132m ($233m) - picking up 1.1m customers - from British Gas owner Centrica.

Meanwhile, Carphone has also purchased the UK and Irish fixed line operations of Swedish firm Tele2 for £8.5m.

Tele2 has around 188,000 UK customers and 36,000 in the Republic of Ireland.

Carphone said the combined deals would expand its current fixed line customer base from one million to around 2.4 million.

...
All OneTel and Tele2 customers will be moved to Carphone's TalkTalk service over the new year.
...

Full article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4541148.stm

Centrica (OneTel) lost me as a telecoms customer about a year ago.

If Centrica now start plugging OneTel through BG in order to secure the £37.1mil part of the purchase price that cpw has promised for additional customers, or indeed an additional £22.2mil for additional customers above and beyond those agreed, then they'll be losing me as a gas customer too!

Talk-Talk will fail!

Remember, TalkTalk has the new merged NTL/Telewest company,BT,Bulldog,Toucan,18866 limited and Wight Cable to compete with altogether!

Fresh,TalkTalk Mobile and Mobile world sales have slumped and are stagnant since the new offers to customers have statred by Orange,O2 and Virgin Mobile.

Plus, Opal/Atlantic Telecom; business telephony and internet from the CP Warehouse is also slumping! Most businesses said they prefer Cable and Wireless,NTL business and MCI Worldcom.

I dumped British Gas the moment I could, and will never have anything to do with them again. Also for gas, British gas will always be much more expensive than alternatives until they no longer have over 50% of the market.

NTL/Telewest/Virgin
You forgot Virgin Mobile! The whole operation is said to aiming to run under the brand "Virgin Communications" my brother works for Telewest he is quite p****d off with the whole thing as they are about to inherit millions of dissatisfied NTL customers let down by NTL's useless customer services...

I am a British Gas Customer and a Onetel customer no complaint with either I use BT with free calls for my home and route the international calls via onetel.
I despise talk talk even though most of my family are using them I only hope that one day I dont find that talk talk have ambitiously signed me up so that they route all my calls.

Have you not looked at routing international calls via 18185 from 0.5p/min and no monthly fee?

Who operates the service?
I need to phone USA, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, Germany, And Ireland rep cellular on a regular basis.
What are the rates?

Finarea SA pretty well known to people who are after cheap phone calls.

They run many services such as 18866, 1899, and numerous call through services.

http://www.18185.co.uk/index2.php

USA 0.5p / minute. (landline & mobile)
Trinidad and Tobago 7p/min (landline & mobile) *
Germany 0.5p landline, 14p/min mobile.
Ireland 0.5p lanline, 14p/min mobile.

They don't seem to offer Nigeria, so you would have to use your existing provider or another provider.

With 18185, once you register, you just dial 18185 in front of any call you wish to route via 18185.

18185 has a connection fee of 4p per call.

*Their sister service 1899 also offer the same rate, though with a connection fee of 3p.

UK calls via both 18185 and 1899 are 0p/min + connection charge. 18185 charge 2p/min weekends and 5p/min daytime to UK mobiles.

http://www.discountdial.co.uk/rates.php currently offering calls to UK mobiles at 1p/min also calls to Nigeria landlines 5p/min - this is a dial through so you are charge the moment you connect to their system, and not when the person you are calling answers.

Going the VoIP route, www.voipstunt.com offer free calls, to landlines in the UK, USA, Germany, Ireland and others, Nigeria landline is €0.07 / minute (about 4.8p/min).

A look at http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/callchecker/ will show you what rates you can get from various providers. Be careful of the top-up ones as they seem to offer cheap rates, but you have to dial an 020 number to call through, only any good if you get free calls to 01 and 02 numbers.

I've been using 18866 and 1899 for over two years now, no problems. Though you may have to sign up using a mobile, then once you get your account number log in and add your landline, as otherwise it may come back as they are at capacity on your exchange.

how do you get the bill if you dont have to register?

You have to register with 18185, 1899 and 18866, then you just get billed for the calls you make through them, how often they bill you depends on how much you spend with them, if you spend over about £3 a month you will be billed monthly, if you make less than around £3 of calls a month, they usually wait until your call spend goes over the £3 before they bill you. You can check online what calls you have made, and they will email you a bill and you can look it up online too.

With the call-through services such as discount dial, it is the telecom service you are using that will bill you, best to use BT for calls to the 0844 type numbers unless you can be sure your current provider doesn't charge more. Some of the 0844 numbers at set at 1p/min through to 5p per minute, when you dial these numbers it is BT or OneTel etc who bill you, DiscountDial receive the revenue from the 0844 number, you don't need to pay them anything.

what is an 0844 number for?
My Bt line lets me call any number in the UK beginning 01 or 02 at any time for free no one makes any other calls. All mobiles are called from my mobile Virgin or 02. Any company or other service that begins 08 or 09 I dont call.

0844, 0845, 0870 and 0871 are shared revenue calls.

0844 numbers can cost between 1p and 5p. If you use BT, BT will charge you for these calls, and the telecom service you are calling on them then allow you go dial your destination number, so all you pay is the cost BT charge for that number range of 0844 you have dialled.

These dial throughs are good if you like those type of services, I prefer 1899 and 18185.

If you have unlimited calls package with BT, you might find you are paying over the odds, as on very rarely do these offer the best value for money.

You could get free evening and weekend calls for no monthly charge from either Just Dial Saver or Primus 2, and then use 1899 for daytime calls at 3p per call. Using the free evening and weekend call service and 1899, you would have to make over 516 daytime calls per month before BT option 3 would work out cheaper, over 366 with OneTel, over 283 with Primus 3.

http://www.planet-talk.co.uk/SaverPr...x?source=saver and http://www.just-dial.com/pages/jd_saver.asp?affid=474 for free evening and weekend calls (Also JDS offer capped calls to mobiles at off-peak).

http://www.planet-talk.co.uk/SaverPr...1&source=saver 24/7 calls to 01 and 02 numbers for £8.49.

TalkTalk charge £7.99/month for 24/7 but trying to get them not to force you onto their phone line is almost impossible.

www.saynoto0870.com will often find you the real number an 0845 or 0870 number lands on, therefore saving you money.

At the end of the day, the choice is yours whether you want to save money, or spend more than you have to.

I dont know! I pay about £25 a month and can call UK 24 hours a day. Evenings and weekends are no good to me I want to be able to talk when the kids are out of the house at school. My friends and family are all in London and Reading some 200+ miles away so I rarely have cause to call a local number and I do spend hours on the phone hanging up and re dialing

What does it mean?

You have two choices.

CPS or WLR.

CPS you keep your line rental with BT, but calls are automatically routed via your chosen CPS service.

WLR Both your line rental and calls are billed via your chosen provider, the chosen provider will then block access to cheap calls providers, therefore WLR is not a good idea, whereas CPS is.

Yes you are paying £25.50 per month for 24/7 calls. for the vast majority of people 24/7 calls package at the amount you are paying is never worth it.

How many calls per month do you make during the day? With the amount over the line rental you are paying (Line rental £11 by DD) so you are paying on top of line rental being £14.50, look how many calls you could make via 1899 at 3 pence each - NOT per minute EACH. Is it more than 483 calls during the daytime?

The reason I mentioned getting for NO monthly fee the free evening and weekend calls, is because they are free and therefore you don't need to pay anything during those hours and just pay for the daytime calls at 3p each, now if you make more than 16 daytime calls a day each day then probably a 24/7 service is better for you.

For most people they wouldn't make a great deal of calls during the day, so the free evening and weekend calls with the daytime calls being just 3p each (not 3p/min) is ideal. This was unlike 24/7 where you pay £14.50 extra for these calls every month even when you don't make many calls, you only pay when you make a call at 3p or nothing for the free ones.

It might be worth paying the extra 50p and go with Primus 3, as they are just CPS, so you can keep your line rental with BT and then use 18185 and 1899 for international calls.

(I am however becoming suspicious of this thread).

suspicious of what??? Why???
Its only you and me talking and you advising me about shopping around for phone pricing ???

and me....

I've said it once and I'll say it again. Mr Bex knows his stuff.... I can't fault him

yeah but why is he suspicious?